Murder in Makati
1. So, what happened to VN? Tell us. We said, leaning slightly forward in anticipation, mindful of the beer bottles that we were brushing against as we huddled into a tight ring around a small squarish table in a swishy expat bar.
2. You said it with a flair that could only come out of a drama queen, 'Well... you know about the fire right? Well, it's actually not a fire.' You gave us both the look.
3. AO asked, 'What do you mean?'
4. I ventured, 'You mean he was murdered?'
5. You answered in that affirmation I've learned to use, 'Ugh-ugh' (meaning 'yes' in Tagalog) in that manner that is to me whimsical despite the gravity of our subject. You asked, 'How could you have guessed it?' The way in which as if you would have added, 'Well, I would never have...'
* * *
I still visit his facebook occasionally and there messages are left, right up til the recent January months, by distant friends beckoning to catch up. But there are also more cryptic messages, messages I'm too lazy to translate on babelfish but notes which ended with 'I miss you' or 'I miss you so much', although I doubt that the word 'so' actually means a more severe experience of grief. Grief is after all grief.
* * *
I remember X from our meeting last April, who was a very close friend of VN. She worked in one of the high end retail chain across from where I was staying. They picked me up together on a Saturday night and showed me a good time around town. X was the only 'girl' in the group, he would even sometimes model for NG, a statement to the kind of gender fluid games they play. They seemed to have this undefined bond, the brother and sister sort of ties, the ability to stand together next to each other in a club and not say anything to each other and feel extremely comfortable in one another's company.
I heard that X collapsed the moment she got wind of this tragedy in their little micro-cosmos. I'm curious though if he ever comes back to her as a revenant. Because that's what the one half of a twin does, or so I'm always led to believe. I have tried imagining what it must have felt like, the feeling of collapsing, being stabbed, the way the ground loses concreteness beneath one's feet. But then I'm taught through whispered channels that the past trickles into the present and that he still sticking around - by the apparitions that have appeared and then vanished amidst the wave of crowd in a busy nightclub, the music player turning off by itself, that faint cold draft we would trade for a warm palpable presence. And also less noticeably but more convincingly by the words of encouragement left on his facebook wall as well as them photo-tags on facebook of a happy mischievous face smiling, pouting, posing for the camera assuring us that life's abso-fucking-lutely amazing.
2. You said it with a flair that could only come out of a drama queen, 'Well... you know about the fire right? Well, it's actually not a fire.' You gave us both the look.
3. AO asked, 'What do you mean?'
4. I ventured, 'You mean he was murdered?'
5. You answered in that affirmation I've learned to use, 'Ugh-ugh' (meaning 'yes' in Tagalog) in that manner that is to me whimsical despite the gravity of our subject. You asked, 'How could you have guessed it?' The way in which as if you would have added, 'Well, I would never have...'
* * *
I still visit his facebook occasionally and there messages are left, right up til the recent January months, by distant friends beckoning to catch up. But there are also more cryptic messages, messages I'm too lazy to translate on babelfish but notes which ended with 'I miss you' or 'I miss you so much', although I doubt that the word 'so' actually means a more severe experience of grief. Grief is after all grief.
* * *
I remember X from our meeting last April, who was a very close friend of VN. She worked in one of the high end retail chain across from where I was staying. They picked me up together on a Saturday night and showed me a good time around town. X was the only 'girl' in the group, he would even sometimes model for NG, a statement to the kind of gender fluid games they play. They seemed to have this undefined bond, the brother and sister sort of ties, the ability to stand together next to each other in a club and not say anything to each other and feel extremely comfortable in one another's company.
I heard that X collapsed the moment she got wind of this tragedy in their little micro-cosmos. I'm curious though if he ever comes back to her as a revenant. Because that's what the one half of a twin does, or so I'm always led to believe. I have tried imagining what it must have felt like, the feeling of collapsing, being stabbed, the way the ground loses concreteness beneath one's feet. But then I'm taught through whispered channels that the past trickles into the present and that he still sticking around - by the apparitions that have appeared and then vanished amidst the wave of crowd in a busy nightclub, the music player turning off by itself, that faint cold draft we would trade for a warm palpable presence. And also less noticeably but more convincingly by the words of encouragement left on his facebook wall as well as them photo-tags on facebook of a happy mischievous face smiling, pouting, posing for the camera assuring us that life's abso-fucking-lutely amazing.